Possible spoilers for the two previous books in this series. Spoiler free for the third book.

Synopsis

The enemy is Other. The enemy is us.They’re down here, they’re up there, they’re nowhere. They want the Earth, they want us to have it. They came to wipe us out, they came to save us.But beneath these riddles lies one truth: Cassie has been betrayed. So has Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. And all 7.5 billion people who used to live on our planet. Betrayed first by the Others, and now by ourselves.In these last days, Earth’s remaining survivors will need to decide what’s more important: saving themselves…or saving what makes us human.

Review

Last year, during a read-a-thon, I read The 5th Wave in one sitting and absolutely loved this dystopian book with aliens. Of course I had to get the next book, The Infinite Sea. For me this second book didn’t measure up to the first one at all, and I was rather disappointed. The Last Star is the third book, and the final book to this trilogy. So how was it when there was such a difference between the first two books for me? Well, I think The Last Star falls right in the middle for me.

The book starts off with a character we don’t know at all. It’s quite a bit creepy to read this from his point of view. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this start as right off we go straight to our main characters. A lot later on in the book he comes back in though so that it didn’t feel so disjointed from the rest of the book.

The pacing of the book is good overall. There is a good pace and build up towards the ending with a reasonable amount of action. The plot was mostly solid. However I do feel that Rick Yancey has a thing with symbolisms and metaphors. This can make things a bit unclear. I wish at moments there was some straight to the point answers instead of dancing around with the symbolism and metaphors. While it is great to be able to have those in your writing, too much can make it hard to grasp the story. And I don’t think all types of plots lend itself towards that very well, which I think was the case with the plot at the end. I just needed a straight to the point sentence for that last half. It’s not that I don’t grasp it. It just didn’t make the same impact. Sometimes a straight to the point sentence can feel like a punch in the face which is what I feel this book lacked at times.

Another thing about the writing in the ending was that when we got closer to the end there was a lot of switching between point of views. Sometimes we only got a paragraph in someone’s point of view before switching as we were nearing the peak. For me it took the emotional sting out of that ending. It had very little emotional impact. It made me feel disengaged. And that is a shame. I get that author’s use it to build up tension, but for me this doesn’t work at all. I like scenes to be finished to a point before switching to someone else’s point of view.

Of course this book couldn’t end without anyone dying. Don’t worry I won’t spoil it. I read, before reading the book, that Yancey had tweeted about there being a certain number of dead characters in this book, and I got worried. However I feel that overall it isn’t quite as bad as he made it sound. There are a few characters that have cheated death a few times.

As for our characters, I feel we got very little of Evan in this book. But that might be just be my personal need for Evan. I found the interaction between Cassie and her brother interesting. Cassie still can’t quite let go of that image in her head of what her younger brother was like before everything happened. While her brother wants to be a soldier and pushes away his past in a way, and with that sometimes his sister.

I’m not too sure about Ringer in this book. Mostly about what was revealed in the second half about her. I’m not quite sure I like this addition or if it was really necessary.

Regardless of all the things that can be considered negative I suppose, I did enjoy reading this book. There is still that familiarity with these characters from the previous books. Their bonds, the good ones and the more strained ones, that continue on to work throughout this book that I liked so much.

Welcome to A Dance with Books

I’m Annemieke. A Dutch book blogger who blogs in English. But I’m also a wife and mom. I prefer to read fantasy (adult and young adult) books but sometimes I deviate from that genre a little. Feel free to leave me a comment or contact me through other social media accounts. I always welcome a chat.

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